by Deborah Hale
Having secured his son’s agreement, Lord Northam nodded to the butler, who had hovered silently just inside the door ever since announcing the doctor’s arrival. Now Gibson hurried away to fetch the nursemaid.
While they waited for Tilly, the duke settled Kit back in bed and the doctor packed his satchel with violent movements and dark muttering under his breath. Leah tried to catch the child’s eye and finally succeeded. She pulled a face in a droll imitation of the doctor’s ferocious scowl. A subversive little grin twisted the child’s lips but rapidly disappeared before his father or the physician had a chance to notice.
At last Tilly appeared, looking rather flustered. Leah was certain Mr. Gibson must have informed the girl of everything that had transpired in the nursery. The duke explained that he wanted her to sit with his son, as usual, and that she must summon him at once if Kit became upset or overexcited.
Then he looked from Dr. Bannister to Leah and nodded toward the door. The physician stalked off at once while Leah hung back. Lord Northam motioned her to go ahead of him. Cloaked in brittle silence, the three of them made their way down to the drawing room.
When they reached it, the duke turned to Kit’s doctor. “May I offer you some refreshment?”
“I could do with a restorative after that wretched business.” The physician scowled at Leah, who could scarcely resist the temptation to stick out her tongue at him, like a naughty schoolgirl.
Instead she addressed him in a tone of pretended solicitude. “You seemed rather overexcited just now, Doctor. Perhaps you would benefit from a liberal dose of laudanum.”
“Of all the deuced impertinence!” he thundered. “Your Grace, will you suffer me to be addressed in that way by a servant in your house?”
Before the duke could order her to hold her tongue or, worse yet, apologize to this great bully, Leah was determined to get in one last jab. “What is so objectionable about my suggestion, pray? If tincture of opium is a harmless medication, why should you not be as quick to take it as you are to administer it to your patients?”
This was a skill she had mastered at school—asking the most outrageously blunt questions in a tone of pretended innocence, with just enough of a mocking edge to render figures of authority ridiculous. Such remarks were responsible for most of the scars on her palms, but it had been worth every lash to assert that her thoughts and her words were still free.
Her present inquiry whipped the physician into a frenzy of rage. With a wordless cry of vexation, he raised his hand to strike her. Leah steeled herself to meet the blow as she had so many others, defiant and unflinching.
But before it could land, the duke stepped between her and the physician. “You forget yourself, sir. I will not tolerate such behavior in my house.”
Dr. Bannister looked as if smoke was about to pour out his ears. “Yet you would allow this... creature... to insult me with impunity after all I have done for your son.”
“For him or to him?” the question popped out before Leah could prevent it.
The duke turned toward her. “That will be quite enough from you, Miss Shaw. Tormenting Kit’s physician, a guest in my house, is not helping the situation.”
His manner was controlled and his voice rang with moral authority that commanded Leah’s respect.
Suddenly she felt ashamed of herself for deliberately goading the doctor. “Yes, Your Grace. Doctor, I apologize if I have offended you. My quarrel is not with you but with the medicine you dispense. I have seen its effects and I firmly believe it is a cure worse than the disease.”
“Nonsense!” The physician huffed. Though he had regained control of himself, he seemed to resent Leah’s apology as much as her earlier mockery.
“Doctor...” The duke spoke in a warning tone. “I reckon we owe it to Miss Shaw to hear what she has to say. Go on, my dear. You claimed laudanum is poison. What did you mean by that? How do you know of its effects?”
His questions seemed to paralyze Leah’s tongue. It had been hard enough to talk about her time at the Pendergast School. But that had come pouring out almost before she could stop herself. Answering the duke now would require a conscious effort to reveal an even more painful episode from her early life. Difficult as it would be to tell Lord Northam, speaking of it in the doctor’s hostile presence would render her unbearably exposed and vulnerable.
Yet, if this might be her only opportunity to prevent Kit from being drugged, what choice did she have?
Chapter Seven
LEAH SHAW HAD been eager enough to speak when Hayden wished she would hold her tongue. Now that he’d bidden her explain herself, Kit’s governess seemed suddenly reluctant. She appeared to struggle over whether to answer his question or not.
The doctor was in no humor to be patient. “Come woman, answer His Grace. Truly, sir, I cannot imagine what possessed you to hire someone so disobliging.”
Hayden shot him a warning look, but the doctor’s words seemed to overcome Miss Shaw’s reluctance. “I told you about my grandmother, Your Grace. In spite of her blindness, she was able to get about with my help and lead a full life. Even after she became rheumatic, we managed well enough. Then, one winter, a well-meaning doctor gave her tincture of opium to ease her aches and pains.”
Hayden could tell how difficult it was for Miss Shaw to reveal this part of her past. Her usual flippancy and rebelliousness had deserted her. She seemed exposed in a way that made him feel even more protective toward her. He wished Dr. Bannister were not present so he could offer her a word or gesture of reassurance.
The doctor clearly had no such sympathy with her. “Laudanum is a perfectly reasonable treatment for the ailment you mention.”
“Let her finish!” Hayden snapped.
Leah Shaw made it clear she did not need him to defend her. “Was it reasonable that my grandmother spent more time in a stupor from the medicine and less living her life? Was it reasonable that she craved more and more of that foul stuff and suffered when she was deprived of it? After my grandmother died, I overheard a neighbor say she had taken too much laudanum and it had killed her. Do you deny that can happen?”
“Medicine is meant to be taken in its proper dosage,” the doctor sounded defensive. “Any substance will have ill effects when consumed in excessive quantities.”
Miss Shaw gave a grim nod as if he had confirmed her suspicions. “I would call any substance capable of causing death and other such ill effects a poison.”
The physician began to bluster.
Hayden ignored him. “Thank you, Miss Shaw. I would like a private word with Dr. Bannister now, if you would be so kind as to go check on my son.”
Kit’s governess looked as if she could not decide whether to be anxious or hopeful.
“Very well, Your Grace.” She made a respectful curtsey then withdrew, though Hayden sensed she was curious to hear what he meant to say to Kit’s physician.
Once she had gone, the doctor sank onto the nearest chair with a loud exhalation. “Thank goodness that is over. The sooner you dismiss that impertinent creature, the better it will be for everyone.”
Such criticism of Leah Shaw made Hayden’s spine stiffen. He crossed his arms behind his back. “Are you expressing a medical opinion or a personal one?”
“Both.” The physician gave a harsh chuckle that sounded almost menacing. “Surely you cannot have any intention of keeping her here after that preposterous display.”
“Is it true the medicine you have given my son is capable of causing death?”
“As I said, any substance in excessive quant—”
“Is it true?” Hayden demanded. “Yes or no?”
“Not in the dosage I give the child. It would take ten times that much to be lethal.”
Hayden had to exert all his self-control to keep from staggering. He had not wanted to believe it, but the doctor could not deny Miss Shaw’s charges. Hayden was forced to acknowledge that he had assisted in subduing his son, so Dr. Bannister could administer a medicine capabl
e of killing Kit.
“Leave my house.” He forced his clenched jaw to move so he could utter the words.
“But Your Grace,” the doctor protested, surging up from his seat, “you must know I would never allow any harm to come to the boy. Think of all I have done over the years to keep him alive.”
Was that living? Hayden fancied he could hear Leah Shaw challenging the physician’s defense. Before she came to Renforth Abbey, he had never questioned Dr. Bannister’s edicts. But she had forced him to reconsider his long-held assumptions about what was best for Kit.
With difficulty, the duke sought to master his anger toward Kit’s doctor. Putting all the responsibility on other shoulders would not absolve him of the choices he had made. “Your treatment poses an unacceptable risk to my son. All this time I trusted you were doing everything in your power to safeguard his health. Yet while you have been away Kit has improved more in body and spirits than I have ever seen him.”
The doctor’s expression hardened. “If what you say is true, it is not all that has changed at Renforth Abbey in my absence.”
“What are you insinuating?” Hayden demanded. “Out with it.”
“You have come under the influence of that governess.” The physician’s lip curled. “I suppose one can hardly blame you. She is young and attractive enough in her way, and you have been alone for a good many years. She has used the child to insinuate herself with you by indulging his every whim, no matter how dangerous. I must caution you against allowing such a dangerous practice to continue.”
“Rubbish!” Hayden tried to ignore a traitorous quiver of agreement from somewhere deep inside him. “Miss Shaw has not the slightest design upon me. She barely tolerates my company. She only agreed to remain at Renforth Abbey for Kit’s sake and then for no more than a year.”
All that was perfectly true, yet he could not deny finding Leah Shaw more than a little attractive. And lately he had become more conscious of the loneliness he’d sought to escape by devoting himself to the care of his child. Was it possible his increasing approval of Kit’s governess had begun to influence his attitude about what was best for his son?
What if she, like the physician he had trusted for so many years, turned out to be wrong?
Leah’s breath came fast and shallow as she slipped out of the drawing room and shut the door behind her. So many intense, conflicting emotions churned inside her, she feared they might spew out in a violent effusion of tears. Much as she hated to admit it, perhaps the doctor was not entirely wrong about the ill effects of too much excitement.
One thing she knew for certain was that she hated feeling this way! It made her heart seem so precariously open. She would much rather hide her feelings behind an outrageous jest or vent them in a riot of laughter. But after her interview with the duke and Kit’s physician, she found it impossible to mount any of her usual defenses.
Telling the two men how her beloved grandmother had been destroyed by the remedy that was supposed to help her roused painful memories Leah had striven for years to forget. Now she yearned for the kind of comforting embrace she had once received from Grace Ellerby or Rebecca Beaton. But her friends were all so far away. Instead she found herself wondering how it might feel to receive such a gesture of consolation from Lord Northam.
The thought shocked her.
The duke was her employer not her friend, Leah chided herself as sternly as her teachers had once done. Yet she could not drown out a mocking whisper in the back of her mind. It reminded her that several of her friends’ husbands had once been their employers.
Leah reacted as violently to that notion as Dr. Bannister had to her taunts. She did not want any nearer connection with the duke or any man! Pleased as she was to see her friends so happy with their new families, she had no more interest in marriage than ever. It was an institution after all, and institutions were designed to curb an individual’s freedom for the collective good. She had vowed never to submit to that kind of regime again.
The murmur of voices from the drawing room was growing sharp, though Leah could not make out what the duke and the doctor were saying to one another. She longed to press her ear to the door and eavesdrop on their conversation, the way she had sometimes done at school, to the horror of her friends. Was His Grace telling Dr. Bannister he would no longer permit his son to be dosed with opiates? Or was he heeding the physician’s demands to send her away? Dr. Bannister would have been right at home on the staff of the Pendergast School.
A swell of gratitude toward the duke rose within Leah as she recalled how he had insisted her voice be heard and how he had placed himself between her and the doctor’s raised hand. All he had asked in return was for her to go to his son’s nursery. His recent conduct had persuaded her more than ever that she owed him her cooperation. Besides, after the frightening experience Kit had endured today, he would need her comfort and guidance.
Spurred by those thoughts, Leah hurried to the nursery, hoping her time as Kit’s governess would not be cut short.
“How has he been, Tilly?” she whispered to the nursemaid with a nod toward the bed.
“Quiet as a mouse, Miss,” the girl replied. “I asked if he wanted me to fetch any of his playthings, but he just shook his head without a word.”
Leah wondered if all the upheaval might have tired the child and made him fall asleep. But when she approached the bed he looked up at her with wide, troubled eyes. Her young pupil might be quiet, but she could tell he was far from calm.
She settled herself on the bed beside him. “Shall I read to you for a while or would you rather read to me?”
Kit ignored her question. Instead, in a terrified whisper, he posed one of his own. “What did Papa say? Is he going to let the doctor poison me with that sleeping medicine?”
His choked voice and stricken look smote Leah’s conscience. What had possessed her to use that word in front of a child his age? No wonder he’d been so quiet all this time, stifled by terror that his father and the doctor were conspiring to do away with him.
“No one is going to poison you.” She wrapped her arms around her young pupil and brought his head to rest against her shoulder. “I should not have said that about the doctor’s medicine. I do not approve of its use, especially on someone your age, so I got rather carried away. You must know your Papa would never do anything he thought might harm you. You mean the world to him. Everything he does is for you.”
The child let out a long, quivering sigh and Leah felt the tightly clenched muscles of his thin frame begin to relax into her embrace.
She was about to congratulate herself on allaying his fears when he challenged her assurances. “If that is true, why does Papa keep me from doing so many things I want? I feel like Gulliver when he was all tied up at first in Lilliput.”
Was this her fault, too? A sharp flick of guilt stung Leah’s conscience. In her quest to secure more freedom for Kit, had she only made him discontented and resentful of his father, who loved him so dearly?
“I understand.” She stroked the child’s fine dark hair in a comforting caress. “But it is really more like when the Queen of Brobdingnag kept Gulliver in his little travelling box. He may have wanted to get out and go where he liked, but there were so many dangers for him in that world. One of the giants might have trodden on him by accident. Or he might have drowned in a puddle.”
“He still got carried off by the monkey,” Kit argued with something like his usual spirit. “And he had to fight the wasps, but he managed well enough. Besides, I am not tiny like Gulliver. There is no danger of anyone at Renforth Abbey stepping on me.”
“That is true.” Leah allowed herself a chuckle to lighten the mood. “But there are other dangers your father fears because your constitution is not strong and your legs do not work the way they should. When you started carrying on a while ago, he was afraid you might work yourself into a fit, which could have harmed you a great deal. He was so desperate to prevent it, he grasped at any measures, even o
ne that might have been... excessive.”
“I couldn’t help getting upset,” Kit said, though Leah sensed a note of shame in his voice. “Papa provoked me. He would not let me have my way.”
“We cannot always have our own way in everything.” As the words came out, it shocked Leah to realize she was echoing one of her teachers from the Pendergast School, though in a gentler tone. “We have to consider others as well. What if Cook decided she did not feel like making your dinner or the scullery maid fancied sleeping in late rather than lighting your fire in the morning? Life might be more agreeable for them, but not for you... would it?”
Kit mulled over that idea, which might never have occurred to him before. Then his head brushed against Leah’s shoulder as he shook it from side to side.
“Freedom is not entirely free,” she continued, hoping Kit was clever enough to grasp an idea she had resisted understanding until she was much older. “It comes at a price of self-control and responsibility. If you want your father to grant you more freedom, you must show him that you are capable of controlling your behavior, even when you do not get your own way. Do you think you can do that?”
Kit heaved a sigh that suggested he knew it would not be easy. “I will try.”
“I hope you will.” Leah strove to sound confident he would succeed, though she was far from certain. She sensed the child’s mounting frustration with the restrictions imposed by his father. The duke’s habit of giving in to Kit over everything except his wish for greater freedom had left the child unaccustomed to exercising any self-control. “Remember how Gulliver kept calm and went along with the rules the people of Lilliput placed upon him? He could have raged and wreaked havoc upon their island to get his way. What do you suppose might have happened then?”
Kit drew back from her embrace, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes bright with the kind of interest he usually showed during his lessons. “They might have shot him with their arrows and tied him down again. And some of the Lilliputians might have been hurt when he fought them.”